This is not a "blog" in the sense of a daily journal but a place for me to post GPS trail maps of mountain biking and hiking trails, particularly but not exclusively, in the western Greenbelt in Ottawa, Ontario.

Date codes do not reflect actual posting dates but are manipulated to allow me to order the posts in a thematic order.

Please note that images, maps and photos, will be displayed in reduced size. To see the enlarged images click (or multi-click) on them.

20001010

Stittsville Trail System

These are the trails that were hiding right in front of my eyes as I biked past them on my hybrid always wondering where they led to. Finally I decided to check them out and this is the result.

Stittsville is a suburb, that used to be a village, on the southwest edge of Ottawa's urban boundary. These trails lead off of a pathway/trail that goes from the Trans-Canada Trail to Hazeldean Road and runs behind the houses along the urban boundary.

This is not an official trail system and no official parking lot exists. I parked along the road at the end of Thresher Avenue, but there are parking lots serving businesses along Hazeldean Road, including the shopping centre at Jackson Trails, that are close enough to ride from.

The southern section of trails includes sections that go over open grasslands and are not that interesting but, as anyone who has rode on grass will know, can be hard pedaling. The most interesting trails go into the forest where some sections are marked with coloured ribbons. However, most of the trails do not have any ribbons or markings.

At the northern end of the trail system are a couple of trails that go into areas where there are wooden structures and large 4X8 wood sheets. These look like they may be set up for paint ballers to hide behind except that there are no signs of spilled paint, so maybe they are just play forts.

In the middle section is a long trail heading towards Hazeldean Road which deteriorates until it is no longer a trail but just deer tracks in the middle of dense bush.

There are some really interesting features within this system, including a trail that runs along a creek, and a real interesting causeway/bridge over the creek with another alternative narrower more technical/difficult bridge a few feet further along.

There are quite a few sections where trees are lying across the trails and tree branches are growing into the trails. There are also some wet/muddy sections that could do with some trail work.

This land is outside the urban boundary of Ottawa and from what I can tell from the Ottawa Zoning Map is partly zoned RU (Rural Countryside) and partly EP3 (Environmental Protection). I do not know who owns the land but there is certainly potential for a really fun greenbelt-like trail system here with a little/lot of work.

GPS gpx Files

The gpx file for this trail system (and other trail systems) can be downloaded by clicking the link below:

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About Me

Richard W. Woodley was born in Sudbury, Ontario in 1950. He earned an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Laurentian University where he was the News Editor of the student newspaper Lambda and active in student politics. He was active in the New Democratic Party and Waffle in Sudbury and Kanata, as well as Kanata municipal politics. He was a member of the Bridlewood Residents Hydro Line Committee (BRHLC) and creator of the now archived Bridlewood Electromagnetic Fields (EMFs) Information Service. He worked on Parliament Hill for 33 years indexing the Debates of the House of Commons (Hansard) and it's committees.
Richard has been an outdoorsperson and environmentalist for most of his life and a life long cyclist who recently took up mountain biking. He is active on mtbkanata.com and a member of the Ottawa Mountain Bike Association (OMBA).